The Sovereignty Signal Blog

Fran Ulmer, former Alaska Lieutenant Governor and current Chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, is calling for Senate ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty to “protect and assert” America’s interests in the Arctic.

In a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee hearing yesterday, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell affirmed the importance of Law of the Sea Treaty ratification to provide America with the legal footing needed to resolve the ongoing territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

In a recent Portsmouth Herald letter to the editor, Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) lauded the economic and national security benefits of the Law of the Sea, touted her support for ratification and urged her fellow Senators to join her in support.

John Norton Moore, director of the Center for Oceans Law & Policy at the University of Virginia, U.S. Ambassador for the Law of the Sea Convention under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and Reagan appointee to the National Advisory Commission on Oceans and Atmosphere, wrote in a recent Huffington Post op-ed that America must ratify the Law of the Sea treaty or risk the loss of our global ocean leadership.

The next great source of jobs and economic growth may come from an area you rarely think about—the ocean. The waters and seabeds off America’s shores are rich with natural resources—oil, gas, minerals—and economic opportunity. So why aren’t they being developed?

In the most recent edition of Seapower Magazine, Senator John Warner, former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Secretary of the Navy, and Retired Adm. James Watkins, former chief of naval operations and Secretary of Energy and current co-chair of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, explained why the Law of the Sea is key to the extension of U.S. maritime dominance: “In his seminal 1890 treatise, ‘The Influence of Sea Power Upon History,’ Alfred Thayer Mahan laid down the strategy for what turned out to be nearly a century of U.S. maritime dominance. America is blessed with many advantages, and sea power is surely chief among them. The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, or Law of the Sea Treaty, currently being debated in the U.S. Senate and across the United States, offers a critical opportunity to protect America’s pre-eminent maritime worldwide position.”

John Norton Moore, who served in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, and is currently the director of the Center for Oceans Law and Policy at the University of Virginia, had following to say in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed: “All of the Reagan conditions for [the deep seabed mining provisions in “Law of the Sea’] were met in a 1994 renegotiation. …it met all U.S. objectives, including vital navigational provisions for the Navy, especially submerged transit through international straits for our nuclear submarines. The treaty also extends U.S. resource jurisdiction into the oceans in an area larger than the entire land territory of the nation. And it assures access for U.S. deep-seabed mining companies to mid-Pacific mine sites containing over a trillion dollars in strategic minerals.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, American Petroluem Institute and TASC came out with a new print ad today featuring business leaders speaking out in support of Law of the Sea Treaty ratification.

In a recent Lawfare blog post, former legal advisor to the Department of State during the George W. Bush Administration, John Bellinger, points out that the Law of the Sea Treaty is supported by many senior Republican officials.